Mastodawn

Writing Tools, Boredom Wins, and Average is Okay

While one may want to write quickly with ideas flowing from a never ending well that is revolutionary, this is not the case for anyone. This week we’ll take a short look at some tools for publishing books, why boredom matters if you want to have good thoughts, and how mediocrity is likely far better for the world than half-cocked ideas pushed by revolutionaries.

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Book Writing Tools

Last week I was pondering how to write a book now that I don’t use Scrivener or Vellum and readers came through with some recommendations.

From aRubes we have a recommendation to check out Quarto and Typst. Quatro is available as a stand alone app on Linux. Typst has a Github project but they recommend you use their paid hosted service. But Yuliya says that I just need the CLI tool so I’ll have to dig a bit more.

I’ve started writing a short book called The Practice of Productivity1 based on a number of blog posts and a course. At this point the notes are in Obsidian so that’s where the writing is going.

For formatting, I’ve started to work with Emacs and Pandoc to do some formatting of writing for a board where I’m the secretary. It took about 30 minutes to learn the formatting and get something workable.

Boredom for Thinking

I haven’t been bored enough lately. I can identify with the video around 10 minutes in, I feel the restlessness of not feeling boredom and instead finding some meaningless thing to always entertain me. For a while I was not taking my phone on my morning dog walk after dropping the kids off at school and the walk felt peaceful, like my soul was resting.

I find it the hardest to endure boredom when I’m the busiest. When I’m running kids between skating and dance while making dinner and ensuring the kids that are at home are getting their chores done. As I wait for my wife to send me a text that she’s done work and I can warm up dinner for the third time in a night.

It’s far too easy in these moments of stress to grab my iPad and watch some random YouTube video that seems interesting in the moment. It’s later that I find I’m restless and empty, no matter the content I was viewing.

I need to get back to boredom and away from my devices.

Mediocrity Matters

In my field the 10x Engineer is a mythical concept that so many are trying to achieve. We want to be 10x more productive than average so we can earn 10x the salary2 or get 10x the prestige, but most organizations are powered by average engineers. They have good coding and problem-solving skills. They likely have one area of expertise, but they don’t have deep understanding across many disciplines.

I’m not a 10x engineer, I’m just tenacious. I slowly work away at a problem until some random issue is solved because I just put enough work into it. I built a good life being slow, methodical, and willing to stick with something until I figure it out.

While we may all wish we could be someone who changes the world most of us won’t be. At least we won’t invent the next revolutionary product. We can quietly influence the lives of those around us for the better.

I can show up at my kid’s school and fix their PA system today so they can have an assembly. I can go on field trips and laugh with the kids so they can see another adult that values their opinion but also sets boundaries.

While we may have an area of expertise, most of us are pretty dang average on most things. I’m a reasonably fast cyclist and love taking long adventures but I came 30th out of 35 when I raced nationals this year. I put up good times, but was about middle of the pack when I look at the overall racers3.

If everyone was a world-changer, we wouldn’t have the person quietly making the lives of those around them just a bit better daily. Instead we’d have a bunch of people running around with half-developed ideas that throw lives into chaos in their attempt to change the world yet again.

I’d love to have some impact on people, but I’m okay with never being a hugely popular writer. I know that I’ve helped people because I get an email every few weeks thanking me. I don’t need hundreds of emails a day.

Join the email list to make sure you get notified. ↩︎

This doesn’t happen you get paid more maybe but never 10x ↩︎

Including those not racing Nationals and just riding the same event on the day for fun ↩︎

#average #boredom #mediocrity #writing

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Curtis McHale 18h ago

Writing Tools, Boredom Wins, and Average is Okay
While one may want to write quickly with ideas flowing from a never ending well that is revolutionary, this is not the case for anyone. This week we'll take a short look at some tools for publishing books, why boredom matters if you want to have good thoughts, and how mediocrity is likely far better for the wo
https://curtismchale.ca/2025/09/27/writing-tools-boredom-wins-and-average-is-okay/
#3Threads #average #boredom #mediocrity #writing